Re(2): anxiety about the 'ontologic math anxiety'

From: Phillip White (Phillip_White@ceo.cudenver.edu)
Date: Tue Oct 16 2001 - 07:35:30 PDT


mewssjsw@man.ac.uk writes:
>
>
>Yet, the notion of 'reality' needs some thought: whose reality? Dont
>teachers have 'real world' skills? What world do they live in then?

        yes - as Martin has pointed out - teachers are a part of the real
world - they use math "their way" all the time - as well as following a
tightly circumscribed curriculum about what constitutes the answer about
what math _is_.
>
>
>I guess maths belongs to communities of practice, and there are many
>different 'maths languages/genres', many different 'maths realities',
>including maybe 'school maths', 'street maths' and maybe
>'nursing maths', etc, etc. Im not sure if any one version
>is any more 'real' than any other, though professional mathematicians
>generally privelege their own version (and Ive often heard engineers
>privelege theirs too.)

        which i think takes us to the crises of psychology - there are of
course multiple communities of practice of psychology - i.e., short term
therapy driven by cost-control behaviorism.

        what's math _for_?

        what's psychology _for_?

        who is practicing it and for what ends?

        i'm not too sure that for me there is a crises of psychology - in fact,
i'm not too sure that within the community of chat there is a crises of
psychology. is only one out there actually experiencing an
epistemological crises? perhaps that would give us a more concrete handle
 - or to pursue through jay's critique of math education the constraints
of psychology, economy, sociology, anthropology and mythology.

phillip
>

   
* * * * * * * *
* *

The English noun "identity" comes, ultimately, from the
Latin adverb "identidem", which means "repeatedly."
The Latin has exactly the same rhythm as the English,
buh-BUM-buh-BUM - a simple iamb, repeated; and
"identidem" is, in fact, nothing more than a
reduplication of the word "idem", "the same":
"idem(et)idem". "Same(and) same". The same,
repeated. It is a word that does exactly what
it means.

                          from "The Elusive Embrace" by Daniel
Mendelsohn.

phillip white
doctoral student http://ceo.cudenver.edu/~hacms_lab/index.html
scrambling a dissertation
denver, colorado
phillip_white@ceo.cudenver.edu



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